


Two Hurt Animals

by maltango



Category: Samurai Jack (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Nothing explicit, PTSD, mentions of child abuse, not intended as jashi but could be read as such
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-25 00:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10752492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maltango/pseuds/maltango
Summary: Jack and Ashi aren't doing great, but they're doing better together. Or, some short vignettes/drabbles.





	1. Care

**Author's Note:**

> Taking care of someone else means you have to take care of yourself, too. Or, I am here all day for Jack being a good dad. 
> 
> I will update tags for content warnings as I go, and put content warnings at the beginning of each little drabble, just in case. This one contains some mentions of weight gain (in a positive manner) and Jack kills a duck.

****

Jack noticed it while he was washing in a stream one morning. He had gained weight. Not a lot, but enough for him to notice. His ribs no longer jutted out from between taught bands of muscle and his hip bones did not protrude as much. It was good, healthy weight that he had lost along with his sword. At the time he hadn’t noticed he was getting thinner. Likewise, he hadn’t noticed gaining the weight back again. All the same, he felt better for it. His body felt stronger. More complete.

 

Ashi always managed to take at least twice as long to wash as Jack did. It didn’t bother him; he knew she liked to explore the world that was still so new to her. She had once sat and watched caterpillars for almost an hour, enthralled with a kind of childlike curiosity. Today she had no doubt discovered another small miracle of nature. That was fine. It gave Jack time to prepare breakfast. He liked to make decent meals, because he knew if he didn’t, Ashi would eat the bare minimum to keep going. Jack knew what that was like, and he didn’t want that for her.

 

He shot a duck with an arrow, ending the bird in one good clean hit. Collected some berries, and some wild roots and tubers that he knew were good to eat. He was almost done preparing the duck to cook when Ashi finally came back.

 

“Smells good,” she said with a smile, and Jack didn’t know for sure whether she was talking about the broth he had simmering over the fire or the bouquet of wildflowers she had collected on her way back. She dropped cross-legged at the opposite side of the fire from him. “How can I help?”

 

He told her to cut the duck up while he peeled more of the tubers. As he handed the duck over, its head lolled on the end of its neck and he remembered with a flash – _the wolf_. It had brought him a similar bird, back when he had stayed in the cave. When they had both stayed in the cave. Two hurt animals, trying to survive.

 

He hadn’t really understood the wolf back then. He had been grateful, but he hadn’t understood why it had chosen to try to help him and nurture him when it was so badly hurt itself.

 

But now, watching Ashi talk brightly about her morning while they prepared their food together, he understood. Feeling stronger and more complete than he had in years thanks to her, Jack understood. And while he didn’t have his sword back yet, he still had a purpose, and he still had hope.


	2. Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Your choices have clearly led you here, as have mine." Or, Jack and Ashi agree that they never had a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's anything here that needs warning for beyond brief mentions of Ashi's childhood, which is a content warning all of its own.

It took quite a bit of pleading and pestering for Jack to finally agree to teach Ashi some of his fighting techniques. Teaching her meant sparring with her, and Jack had been reluctant to fight her again, even in a friendly, controlled match. But he had to relent when she pointed out that becoming familiar with each other’s fighting styles would let them work far better together.

 

So they sat by their fire together after their first lesson, Ashi rubbing the bruise on her shoulder that lesson had earned her. Jack had apologised profusely about it, but it was the first bruise Ashi had ever enjoyed receiving.

 

And then she had asked where he’d learned that technique, and Jack had gone quiet. He did that sometimes. She would say something, or he would see something, and an odd, melancholy quiet would fall over him. When she asked he would say he was thinking of someone, or remembering somewhere, and wouldn’t elaborate further.

 

But this time, without Ashi even having to ask, Jack started to talk. He told her, not just how he had learned that technique, but about his entire upbringing. Travelling from place to place, passed from expert to expert. His entire life dedicated to amassing enough strength and skill to challenge Aku.

 

“And still it was not enough,” he finished quietly. He stared into the fire while Ashi stared at him. She had never heard the full story of his training before.  

 

“We’re the same,” she whispered. Jack gave her a questioning look.

 

“We’re the same,” Ashi repeated. “You were trained your whole life to defeat Aku, and I was trained my whole life to defeat you. Not that I want to, anymore,” she added apologetically. “But we were both created to defeat another. Neither of us had a choice. We’re the same.”

 

Jack shook his head. “I… do not agree,” he said carefully.

 

“What’s the difference?”

 

“Even if I had not been raised to challenge Aku, I still would have chosen to stand against him. My life was always destined to follow that path in one way or another. But when you were given a choice, you escaped the path that had been forced upon you. Your life would have been very different, if you had been able to choose for yourself.”

 

Ashi considered his words as she stared into the fire. Since meeting Jack she had spent a lot of time trying to untangle who she _was_ from what she had _experienced_. Sometimes it seemed impossible. Sure, Jack wasn’t wrong – if she had been born into a completely different environment, she would have grown into a completely different person. But the same could be said for anyone; the same could be said for Jack. He was just as much a product of his upbringing as Ashi was of hers.

 

“I am sorry for killing your sisters.” Jack’s voice broke through her thoughts, and broke halfway through the sentence. His eyes were closed and Ashi watched his adam’s apple bob tightly as he swallowed.

 

“You didn’t really have any other option,” she replied.

 

“It felt that way at the time. But now, I am not so sure. They… could have turned out like you.”

 

A log cracked in the fire, and the wood shifted as if it was trying to fill in the silence for them. Ashi didn’t know what to say. The truth was she had thought about this many times. About them. She had mourned them, quietly, guiltily. Wrestled with the fact that she had only lived where they died because of her own inadequacies. It seemed so unfair, so brutal, that the one to survive was the least obedient of them. The most distractible. The most unreliable. And now she had a life all her own, and she had seen so many wondrous things, and met so many incredible people, and her sisters were simply… gone. They never had a chance. They never had a choice.

 

But at the same time, Ashi couldn’t blame Jack. Yes, they had died by his hand directly. But Jack hadn’t had a choice either. The one Ashi blamed – the one who was truly responsible no matter how she looked at it – was the Priestess. Ashi and her sisters never would have gone through the trials and tortures of their upbringing if it wasn’t for the Priestess. And the Priestess never would have existed if it wasn’t for Aku.

 

Aku. It always came back to Aku.

 

“I should have found another way,” Jack said, more to himself than to her. Ashi wished in that moment she knew what to say to make him feel better. To make herself feel better. But it was one of the many things she had neither the words nor the experience for.

 

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said finally. Jack gave her a look that was equal parts grateful and apologetic.

 

“We will find my sword,” Jack said. “We will find it, and make sure that nothing like that happens to anyone else. For them.”

 

“For them,” Ashi agreed, “and for everyone else.”


	3. Surprises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashi isn't used to having someone care about her well-being. Or, nobody goes through a childhood like Ashi's without some lingering issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for PTSD and mentions of child abuse re: Ashi's entire life, but nothing really serious or graphic.

“Stop!”

 

Jack’s voice cut through the still air, and instantly Ashi flinched to a standstill. Jack had never spoken to her like that before, but the Priestess had, and it had always been followed by a harsh and painful reprimand. What had she done wrong? They had just been climbing up a steep hill. Ashi’s breathing shallowed and her body tensed as Jack advanced on her. She forced herself to try to keep calm. Jack wasn’t the Priestess. He wouldn’t– and if he did, she could fight back– but he wouldn’t– but that _voice_ –

 

“Did you touch that plant?” he demanded, pointing at an innocuous, dark green fan of fronds.

 

“No. I didn’t, I swear.” But she couldn’t remember if she had, and her uncertainty was clear in her voice.

 

Jack reached forward and took her hands. “Those plants are covered in a sticky sap that will give you a terrible rash if you touch it. You will be itching and bleeding for days.” He turned her hands over in his own, inspecting them with an amused and rueful smile. “I learned that the hard way.”

 

Ashi’s breath deepened again, catching in her throat as it did so. Jack wasn’t going to punish her. Of course he wasn’t. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he didn’t want anything else to hurt her, either. Jack wasn’t like the Priestess. The anticipation of pain drained from Ashi’s body to be replaced by a mix of relief and gratitude and embarrassment, and several other emotions she couldn’t pin down. Her cheeks flushed as tears prickled at the corner of her eyes.

 

The Priestess had always _hated_ when Ashi or her sisters had cried. It was a sign of weakness, she said, not befitting those with as great a purpose as the sisters, and she taught them to resist such weakness.  Ashi didn’t cry from pain anymore. But these were a different kind of tears, and Jack was a different kind of teacher. When he noticed she was starting to cry, his lips pursed in sympathy. His eyes flicked over any exposed patches of skin, still looking for a rash.

 

“Where did you touch it?” he asked. Ashi shook her head.

 

“I didn’t touch the plant,” she repeated with a small laugh. The action caused a tear to slip free and track down the side of her face.

 

“But then why are you…”

 

“You just surprised me. That’s all.”

 

“Oh.” Jack instantly released her hands. “I did not intend to startle you. I am sorry.”

 

Ashi shook her head quickly. “Don’t be,” she told him. “It was a good surprise.”

 

Jack fixed her with an openly baffled expression. Ashi grinned and wiped her face with the heel of her hand. She would keep him guessing on this one.

 

“Come on, Jack! Let’s get going! We don’t have all day.”


	4. Bad Dreams and Worse Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares aren't unusual for Ashi or Jack. Or, everyone can do with a little reassurance after a bad dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for PTSD, nightmares, and Ashi's childhood, though as per there's nothing graphic.

They slept in shifts, to keep watch for wild animals, bandits, and minions of Aku alike. So far it had only paid off once, when Jack had woken her just in time for them to defend against some horrible creature that consisted of far too many teeth and claws, but once was enough to prove a necessity.

 

Tonight Ashi was watching Jack more than she was watching the outskirts of their camp, though. Some nights Jack would sleep so still and so deeply that Ashi would lean in close just to check he was still breathing. Those were his good nights, and he would wake from them refreshed and strong. Tonight was not one of those nights.

 

Tonight Jack was restless, and even though he was unconscious Ashi wasn’t sure she would call what he was doing _sleeping_. He was twitching and flinching, his fingers tensing and grasping against the floor of the sheltered cave they were spending the night in. His breath was irregular and hitching, and every now and again he would make a sick, frightened whimper. Ashi hated that most of all; he didn’t sound like the man she had come to know and respect when he made those noises. He barely even sounded human.

 

She wondered if she should wake him up, rescue him from the monsters that were hunting him in his head. But if she woke him up he would insist on taking over the watch early, and Ashi couldn’t decide whether it would be better to let him have the last hour or so of sleep before his shift started, even if it was restless and frightening.

 

Jack sat up with a cry. His breathing was hard and fast, and his eyes cast about wildly without actually seeing anything. He pressed himself up against the wall of the cave, and Ashi was certain that it was the only thing keeping him steady at that moment. The tendons in his neck strained and flexed as he swallowed and made another animal noise.

 

“Jack?”

 

He flinched as he turned around to face her with half-focused eyes. He extended one hand out to her, and Ashi noticed his hand was trembling. His whole body was trembling. His hand landed heavily on her head and dragged down the side of her face. A callus on his thumb scraped against the outside corner of her eye and she caught his hand and gently removed it.

 

“I’m real,” she assured him. “But that was just a bad dream. I’ll wake you up next time,” she promised. She used her hold on his arm to force him – gently – back into a lying position.

 

“You’re safe. Go back to sleep.” Ashi made her voice as soft as she could. Jack nodded and curled in on himself. He was still shaking. He looked so small, and Ashi was struck with the desire to place her hand on his shoulder or hair. She dismissed that as quickly as it had appeared, embarrassed both by her own weakness and by acknowledging his. They were warriors, trained from childhood for combat, not small animals that needed petting.

 

They didn’t talk about it in the morning. They never did, even though Ashi was sure her own restless nights came just as frequently as Jack’s did. But three nights later Ashi found herself being shaken awake by her companion.

 

“You’re having a bad dream,” he told her as Ashi blinked awake. The nightmare dissipated before she was fully conscious, leaving in its wake a thick, ugly feeling like tar in the pit of her stomach.

 

“Thank you,” she murmured, and pulled closer to him. They weren’t quite touching, but Ashi could sense his body next to hers. Glimpses of her upbringing swam through her mind and she took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly to try to push them away. She did it again, and again, and on the fourth time she felt Jack’s hand run across her hair. It was a foreign sensation but some part of her felt that it _shouldn’t_ have been. Ashi released a tension in her shoulders that she didn’t even realise she had been holding. This was natural, she realised as she fell back to sleep with Jack’s hand running gently over her hair. Wanting this kind of touch and comfort was natural. It was natural, and it was good, and it wasn’t weakness.

 

The next time she woke Jack up from one of his nightmares, Ashi rested her hand on his shoulder and rubbed small circles with her thumb until he fell back to sleep.


	5. Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Ashi take things a little too far while training. Or, you can't tell me Jack isn't all kinds of messed up over killing Ashi's sisters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, this is a long one! 
> 
> As per, warnings for PTSD and canon-typical mentions of child abuse, and this one has Ashi and Jack being a little violent towards each other. But they're fine. There's still nothing even half as shocking as Scaramouche's potty mouth.

“This is a trick one of my teachers showed me.” Jack reached into the inert pile of ash that had been their fire, and coated the short twin staves he was holding in ash. He tapped one against the back of his arm, leaving a dark grey smear on his skin. “This way we will know exactly where we got hit, and the kinds of attacks we need to work on blocking.”

 

Ashi already knew this method of practice, although the Priestess had replaced ash-coated sticks with glowing hot metal rods. Ashi and her sisters had quickly learned to block and dodge when every failure resulted in another burn on their skin.

 

She didn’t tell Jack any of this, though. When she talked about things like that, he would look at her with such acute sorrow that it made her want to protect him from the facts of her upbringing. So she simply took one of the staffs and adopted a fighting stance.

 

Twenty minutes later she let out an irritated sigh while Jack rubbed the dull ache from his ash-covered hand.

 

“You’re not even trying!” she accused as he bent down to retrieve his staff.  It was the sixth time she had disarmed him in their match, and so far Jack had only landed a handful of apologetic hits on her. Ashi knew she was skilled, but Jack wasn’t a world-famous samurai for no reason.

 

They started again, and before long Ashi had him disarmed with the same series of motions as before. Her staff connected with his hand much harder this time, causing him to hiss at the unexpected pain.

 

As Jack bent to collect his staff, Ashi swung her staff at his face. He deflected it instantly, ducking below her swing and driving his elbow into her wrist. The staff was gone from her hand almost before she’d registered the blow. She snarled as she retrieved her staff.

 

“Stop holding back!”

 

Jack’s hands dropped to his sides and Ashi could tell he was moments away from calling their training session off entirely. She planted her feet and put one hand on her hip, the other hand waving her staff at him.

 

“Jack, I’m never going to learn anything if you don’t challenge me.”

 

Now it was Jack’s turn to sigh, the same one he always gave when he knew she was right but wished she wasn’t. He turned to face her and they both adopted their stances again.

 

“I’m going to hurt you if you let me get a hit in,” Ashi warned. Jack put up a better fight this time – coming from somebody else it might even have been convincing – but eventually Ashi drove the staff from his hand with a harsh _crack_.

 

Jack flexed his hand to make sure he could move through the pain. “You’re becoming too angry,” he cautioned.

 

“You’re not giving me the respect I deserve,” she countered. She swung at him again and he brought his staff up to parry just in time. Jack was forced to move backwards to deflect and evade Ashi’s attacks, but he still refused to strike back at her. Her blows became wild as her fury raised to a crescendo until finally – she got her first genuine hit in. The staff cracked _hard_ against the back of Jack’s bare shoulder when he dodged just a second too slow. A puff of ash lifted from his skin, which was already displaying a raised red welt from the blow.

 

Jack rolled his shoulder and regarded her with a sideways look. Ashi couldn’t read the expression on his face and her own lips curled in a snarl. With a cry she lunged forward again and this time Jack’s heart was in it. He blocked her, stepped backwards, turned, and suddenly Ashi was the one being driven backwards in an attempt to defend.

 

She swung out one more time, connected with another crack, and Jack’s staff spun through the air. But he used his right hand to grab her arm and pin it against his body, and in one fluid motion snatched her staff away with his left hand while he spun to pull her closer to him. The staff came to a rest against her throat, and in the moment of stillness that followed all Ashi could do was marvel at how gently Jack had struck that final blow, compared to the flurry that preceded it.

 

Jack looked down at his hand, and when he looked back at Ashi there was something horrified and distraught in his eyes. He took a half step back and dropped the staff, his hand shaking with the absence of weight.

 

“Jack?”

 

“I…”

 

Jack closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her. Ashi tensed but, no, he wasn’t hurting her. He was just… holding her.

 

 _“I’m sorry,”_ he whispered. With the side of his neck pressed against her cheek, Ashi could feel his heartbeat thrumming at least twice as fast as her own, and his arms constricted and loosened around her with every swift shallow breath he took.

 

“Jack…”

 

Jack leaned away and rubbed at her throat with the side of his palm. He only succeeded in smearing the grey further across her neck and with a small whimper he folded her into his arms again. This time Ashi returned the gesture, bringing her hands up to run across his back. Guilt flushed through her as she used her fingertips to follow the raised line she had inflicted across his shoulder.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jack repeated. Ashi pretended that the hot drop that fell from his face onto her back was sweat.

 

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I’m sorry, too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was clear that their match was a sort of a re-enactment of Jack killing the first of the sisters. I had to watch that scene in slow-mo so many times to be able to follow their actions. Also, as far as I am concerned, this is the first time Ashi has ever had a hug in her life.


	6. Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashi's life has been full of pain. Or, sometimes you've got to find pleasure where you can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per, Ashi's childhood is the most distressing thing mentioned. But this chapter primarily revolves around how pain can potentially be a positive thing, which, I don't know if that needs warning for but I'd rather let people avoid it than upset them unnecessarily, so.

All her life Ashi had worn pain like a second skin, and only now was she learning that there could be good kinds of pain.

 

Ashi and her sisters had been born for a single purpose, and every lesson towards that purpose was taught through pain. If they weren’t suffering, they weren’t learning. Ashi had believed she and her sisters had learned everything there was to know. But then, Ashi had believed a lot of things that weren’t true.

 

There were things that felt like pain but weren’t. The dull ache in her chest when Jack was having a nightmare, or the way her stomach turned to hot embers when she saw someone innocent being hurt. When she thought of her sisters her there was pain in her throat like being choked, and a stinging in her eyes when she realised all over again that her sisters would never feel any of these things.

 

But Ashi could, and she invited every second of it, because it belonged to _her_. It was _her_ grief, _her_ love. When it grew with such intensity that her body couldn’t contain it and it blossomed into pain, Ashi welcomed it. She would never regret caring for others.

 

Stepping into snow or bathing in cold water snatched her breath away and made her gasp the same as being burned did. The cold biting into her flesh as she scrubbed, the icy water numbing her extremities like an amputation, was a shock to her heat-tempered body. But in comparison to the intense training and fire she had grown up in, the cold was freedom.

 

Ashi’s bones vibrated with the memory of impact after especially fierce battles. In the peace after these conflicts she would sit and trace new wounds with her fingertips, press her thumbs into fresh bruises. When she stretched hours later, curled her fingers into fists then flexed them out again, the keen ache in her joints felt like success.

 

The skin on Jack’s hands was perpetually rough. When he noticed Ashi was in pain, those hands would guide her through improvised self-care. Through collecting wild herbs, the thorns of which cut her fingers, and preparing them with tools that grazed and callused her palms, Ashi’s hands became rough as well. With them she created salves that stung before granting relief. When Jack massaged her coarse, over-worked hands with his own, the joints in her fingers throbbed in a chorus of discomfort. But it was, somehow, a good kind of pain. Somehow, it felt like healing. 

 


	7. A Matter of Necessity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashi needs help getting to sleep. Or, you can't tell me these two aren't completely touch-starved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of Ashi's childhood, as usual, but nothing as bad as in the show, as usual. 
> 
> I also want to warn for 'jashi' content on this one. Even though I'm more interested in Jack and Ashi reconciling one another's emotional trauma rather than them being in a romantic relationship, I'm also aware this whole fic is playing jump-rope with the line between intense platonic intimacy and potential romance. Basically, interpret as you please, and if the Jack/Ashi relationship makes you uncomfortable just keep that in mind.

The innkeeper looked Jack up and down critically when he and Ashi walked in. The innkeeper was a human woman, heavy-set and in her late thirties or early forties, with an ugly scar running across her collarbone. Ashi glanced at Jack for guidance – was this woman being hostile? They hadn’t stayed at an inn since they had started travelling together, and Ashi had little frame of reference for what was ‘normal’. But Jack was as stoic and calm as always.

 

“Well, that’s hardly fair,” the innkeeper tutted as the pair approached her. “Last time you were in here, I was a young woman. And you haven’t aged a day.”

 

Next to her, Ashi could sense Jack’s discomfort at the comment, but he offered the woman an apologetic smile.

 

“How much for two rooms for the night?”

 

“Oh, no, your money’s no good here, Samurai. My two best rooms, on the house.” She turned to Ashi with an incredulous shake of her head as she slid two keys across the counter. “Look at him. He saved this town, and he thinks he has to pay for a room.”

 

“Thank you. You are very kind.” Jack gave a small bow, his hands pressed together in front of him. Ashi studied his body, the way he held his shoulders and hands, and copied the action. When she rose out of the bow, Jack was smiling fondly at her.

 

“What?” she asked, touching a hand to her hair self-consciously. Jack shook his head, still smiling, and pushed one of the keys over to her.

 

They had dinner at the inn. The innkeeper insisted on feeding them far too much, and again refused to let them pay.

 

“We wouldn’t want to take advantage of your hospitality,” Jack said. The innkeeper rebuffed him by feigning insult.

 

“Hospitality, nothing! You saved this town! Is my home not even worth a free meal to you?”

 

Jack held his hands up to placate her and apologised for the misunderstanding. The innkeeper gave a loud bark of laughter.

 

“Don’t you apologise, Samurai! Such a serious man!”

 

“I think she likes you,” Ashi said when the innkeeper left them.

 

“It is hard to tell,” Jack replied, and Ashi caught the way his eyes narrowed with amusement. Jack’s sense of humour was as subtle and rare as his smile, but Ashi enjoyed every moment of both.

 

Just before they separated to their own rooms, Jack glanced around to make sure the innkeeper wasn’t near.

 

“I do not remember what I did to help this town,” he confessed.

 

“Just another in a long list of good deeds?”

 

When Jack only got that quiet look in his eyes again, Ashi shrugged.

 

“I don’t think it matters. That woman – this whole town – is better because of you, whether you remember it or not.” That one got a grateful smile out of him, and they parted for the night.

 

Ashi had never slept in a real bed before. Under her mother’s control, when she and her sisters had been allowed to sleep they slept on the ground, and had learned to sleep sitting cross-legged so they could leap into combat more effectively. Travelling with Jack she had at least started sleeping lying down, which was certainly more restful, but they still slept on the ground. Jack himself seemed capable of falling asleep under just about any circumstances.

 

But a proper bed was, well, a _proper bed_. Ashi stretched out in the middle of the big double bed, releasing tension from her joints into the soft mattress. Her head sunk into the pillow and she tried to adjust it so it wouldn’t stifle her hearing, but when she couldn’t manage that she dropped it onto the floor and nestled her head in the crook of her elbow. Then she re-adopted the position on her other side. She was tired, but not tired enough that she could just _sleep_. She rolled onto her back and stared at the moonlight filtering in around the curtains. There was a tension, she realised, in her chest.

 

 _Relax,_ Ashi willed herself. _Relax, relax, relax._ She took such a deep breath that her chest ached, held it, and let it out as slowly as she could. When that didn’t work she tried one of the breathing exercises Jack had taught her ( _in, two, three, four, five, six, hold – out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, hold_ ). But it wasn’t that she needed to calm down, it was more that she was – what? Restless? Unsettled? Ashi was still learning to acknowledge her own needs, and this was one she couldn’t quite pin down yet.

 

With a small groan she rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. This was ridiculous. The most comfortable thing she had ever had the privilege to sleep on, and she couldn’t sleep! All she could do was lie there pointlessly, in the near-dark. Listening to the soft drip of water from the loose tap in the adjoining bathroom, and the artificial ticking from the clock on the wall, and…

 

…And nothing else.

 

Ashi suddenly felt very small. This was the first time she had ever slept on her own.

 

She had always slept with her sisters nearby. And while they had been trained to be absolutely silent, there was always the knowledge that they were _there_. An awareness of other bodies near her own. It was the same with Jack, especially with them sleeping in shifts. It was easy to fall asleep to the metronome of Jack’s breathing, comforted by the knowledge that he was watching over her.

 

Ashi sat up and tucked the blanket around her like a cloak. She felt silly. Childish. She could hear her mother’s voice mocking her from some deep mental recess. _Lonely? You can’t sleep because you’re lonely? Weak. Pathetic. Unfocused. You’ve never earned a single breath you’ve taken._

“Shut up,” she muttered half-heartedly. She knew that voice wasn’t going to stop, but that didn’t mean she had to listen. What would Jack say about it? If he was here? Well, she wouldn’t be having this little crisis if he was here; the whole problem was that he was in another room.

 

Ashi tucked her knees against her chest and picked guiltily at a rough edge of skin on one thumb. Jack was in another room. Just across the hall. Six paces from her bed to her door. Two paces from her door to his.

 

And then what would she say when she got there? _Sorry to wake you up from the first full night’s sleep you’ve had in probably years for no reason, can I come in?_

No. No, no, no, this was stupid. She was going to lie down, close her eyes, and go to _sleep_. One the count of three. Her head would hit the mattress and she would be unconscious. One, two, three. Three. Three.

 

Ashi held out for what she felt was an admirable number of minutes before she gave in and knocked on Jack’s door.

 

As soon as she knocked she regretted it. She prayed he hadn’t heard. Then she could just slink away back to her own room and pretend this had never happened. Four torturous seconds was long enough for the mixed bag of rejection and relief to sink in, and Ashi turned away - just as the lock of Jack’s door clicked.

 

He took a half-step back from the door, ready as always to defend against an attack. His sword was in his hand.

 

“Ashi? What’s wrong?” His voice was soft, barely louder than the breath that made it.

 

“There’s no danger. I was just wondering if… if I could sleep in your room? Tonight?”

 

Jack stared at her for a long second, blinking slowly, blearily. She _had_ woken him up. Ashi tried to read his face to get a feel for how angry he was. But it was dark, and she hadn’t had much practice with faces. She was better at reading voices, and Jack said so little.

 

Wordlessly, he stepped back and opened the door for her. “You can have the bed. I will sleep on the floor.”

 

“That’s stupid,” Ashi said, before she could stop herself. Her cheeks and forehead ran hot at her own insolence. “I just mean, the bed is big enough for both of us. There’s no need for either of us to sleep on the floor.”

 

Jack rubbed the back of his neck, and as bad as she was with reading expressions, even Ashi could tell he felt awkward.

 

“I think… that would not be… appropriate…” Jack said slowly, as if he was hoping Ashi would interrupt and rescue them both from this situation she had created. Instead she shrugged the blanket defiantly around her shoulders.

 

“Why not? We sleep next to each other all the time.”

 

“Well…”

 

“I don’t see the difference.” That was a lie, of course; the difference was a matter of necessity. It was the same reason one of them would cradle the other in a hug when a bad dream came in the middle of the night, but not when they were simply enjoying one another’s company in the light of day. But Ashi had already committed by now.

 

And finally, Jack did too. With a nod, he moved to one side of the bed and invited Ashi to the other side.

 

The middle of the bed was still warm from Jack’s body heat, and that warmth lay between them like a third body. Ashi noted that Jack had also discarded his pillows, and they lay facing, mirroring the other’s position.

 

 _‘Thank you,’_ Ashi mouthed at him. Jack gave a little smile in return, but his eyes were already dropping shut. Within minutes his breathing had slowed and deepened, and Ashi knew from many nights of listening to the same that he was in one of his good deep sleeps.

 

Silently, Ashi rolled over into the warm space between them. Her back came to a stop an inch away from Jack’s chest, and she felt his breath run through her hair and down the back of her neck. In a matter of seconds Ashi felt her eyelids begin to grow heavy as Jack’s body heat melted the knot in her chest away.

 

As her body relaxed, her shoulder bumped into Jack’s chest. He gave a sleepy hum and shifted slightly, and then his arm slipped around Ashi’s waist. She took a deep breath to emphasise the pressure of his arm over her. It was so nice.

 

She had thought it wasn’t a necessity, but at that moment she would have sworn that she needed this as much as she needed to sleep or eat. Ashi wanted to stay this way for ever. She wanted to make up for every day of her life that she had been denied this closeness, this intimacy. She reached up and ran her hand across Jack’s forearm, feeling the furrows and ridges of scars under her fingers. His arm pulled tighter around her in response. She needed this. They both did.

 

Finally Ashi fell asleep, a soft smile on her lips.

 


	8. Venison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack catches a deer for dinner. Or, watching two deer smooch was the first time Ashi witnessed non-violent physical contact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, episode 8 sure was. Something. That was definitely an episode of a television show. 
> 
> In this entry Jack kills a deer, so if animal death upset you this isn't going to be your cup o' tea. 
> 
> Fun fact: Jack set up a spear-shooting trap like this in one of the season 1-4 episodes to try to catch a deer.

Four fine black hooves picked their way across the sun-dappled forest floor. The deer tucked its nose under a pile of leaves and huffed to scatter them and expose the lush red apple below. It bit into the delicious fruit, rolling the apple as it did so. The string tied around the stalk of the apple lost its tension with a quiet snap, and the deer only had a second to register the foreign noise before the trap sent a spear through the side of its head. The animal collapsed, its hooves gouging into the earth with its final agonal gasps. Jack watched its body writhe against its head, which was pinned to the ground by the spear, before the animal fell still with one final shudder.

 

“Ashi!” he called, “I caught dinner!”

 

Actually, the deer would supply them with more than just dinner. The venison would feed them at least through tomorrow – the meat would probably begin to spoil before they could eat it all. That was no problem; it simply meant they would have to eat very well to stop it from going to waste. Jack loved venison, and he was looking forward to sharing it with Ashi. His feelings of satisfaction and pride shrivelled quickly when Ashi stopped at his side with a horrified gasp.

 

“Oh no,” she murmured, dropping to her knees next to the deer. Jack crouched next to her, watching her face in confusion. The deer was a sad sight – its eyes were open, staring glassily at the modest pool of its own blood. Its mouth was also open and its tongue was lying amongst pieces of half-chewed apple.

 

Jack frowned at her distress. This was unusual for her; Ashi was no stranger to violence or death. They shared the hunting duties and between them had ended many rabbits and birds. She had never reacted like this before. It was sad to see such a beautiful creature killed, but its death had been as swift as possible and was far from pointless.

 

“What is it?” Ashi asked quietly.

 

“A deer,” Jack told her. She stroked one hand over the side of its face, her little finger brushing against the spear. “Ashi, I understand that you are upset” – although why she was upset was still a mystery to him – “but we have to hunt to eat.”

 

“I know. I just wish you didn’t have to kill it.”

 

Jack sat back on his heels and watched Ashi’s slender hand trace the markings on the animal’s face. Then she leaned closer to it until her face was only inches from the deer’s, and rubbed her fingertips softly against the animal’s nose. She paused as if she was waiting for something from the dead animal, but of course, nothing happened.

 

“Ashi? What is the matter?”

 

Ashi sat back up and offered him a small smile. She wasn’t upset anymore, although Jack could see something wistful in her eyes.

 

“I was just thinking about the first time I ever saw a deer,” she said. Jack waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. What she _did_ do was lean closer to him, one hand outstretched.

 

Jack paused, any potential response dying on his lips, as she brushed her fingertips against his cheek in exactly the same way as she had done to the deer. Jack got the sense that he was being tested somehow; that there was a correct and an incorrect way to respond to this. He lifted his hand and echoed the motion back to her, brushing his fingers over her cheek with the same back-and-forth rhythm. Her skin shifted under his fingertips as Ashi’s face lit up in a bright smile.

 

“Okay,” she said, swivelling into an attentive cross-legged pose. “Show me how to prepare this.”


	9. Responsibility of Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack takes too long to get dinner. Or, Ashi once again trips over Jack's emotional baggage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, so, warnings for suggestions of suicide and depression on this one. I know what it's like to worry about a loved one with depression, and I know what it's like to be the loved one with depression, and in short both sides of that coin suck. Once again I don't think I crossed any lines the show didn't. 
> 
> Oh, and Jack kills a bunny. I know, he does a lot of hunting in these stories, but I feel like his relationship with animals is surprisingly complex, and the guy's gotta eat. 
> 
> Otherwise, I wanted to write this one because I know the previous entries put a lot of emotional weight on Ashi supporting Jack. Which I didn't do accidentally, because they're all feelings I have had towards older family members and/or friends with depression. But I also know that kind of thing can take its toll, especially when mental illness makes it so difficult to see things from others' perspectives.

Ashi dropped the logs near the fire and brushed loose shreds of bark from her front and arms. That would be enough wood to keep the fire burning overnight, she decided, if they weren’t wasteful. It wasn’t cold, so they only needed the fire to ward animals away.

 

She crouched by the fire and turned some embers to keep it alive while she waited for Jack to return to camp. He was off finding food for them, but it usually didn’t take him so long. Over the years Jack had become pretty skilled at hunting and trapping animals, and he could identify just about every edible plant, so he was typically back and preparing their food before Ashi was done with her share of the work.

 

Ashi got bored very quickly. All through her childhood every hour of ever day had been dedicated to some lesson or task; inaction was completely alien to her. She tried fruitlessly to find something to do around their camp for all of five minutes before her need to be proactive kicked in and she decided to go and find Jack.

 

It didn’t take her long to find him, but she still wasn’t there soon enough. A gasp of horror was ripped from her like she had been punched in the stomach. He was kneeling, his back to her, as blood rolled onto the ground before him. She could see his right hand, a blood-covered knife glinting in time with the tremors of his arm. They were in the cemetery again, the sunlight adopting an eerie green aura and the trees turning into tombstones, but this time she was too late.

 

“No! Jack, no!” She had tried so hard, he had fought _so hard_ , he’d been doing so well, _how could he–_

 

She rounded on him to find he was perfectly intact. The red-coated knife was still in his right hand, but in his left was cradled the miserable body of a large wild rabbit. The blood was coming from the wound Jack had put in its neck, and several other lacerations ruined the canvas of its fur.

 

“The snare caught it badly,” Jack said, his voice as unsteady as his hands. He didn’t even look up from the suffering his snare had caused, and Ashi was glad, because she could feel heat rolling across her face and to the top of her head in waves.

 

“Don’t _do_ that!” Ashi shouted, punctuating her words by slamming the sides of her fists into the back of his shoulder. He winced, but it was by far the least dangerous thing she could do with her hands.

 

“Ashi, what-”

 

“You scared me!” She shoved him, his hunched body offering too much resistance for the action to be satisfying. Her emotions raced through her like a forest fire and she pressed her fists against her thighs to keep them from striking Jack again.

 

“I came looking for you! And you were kneeling, and there was blood, and I thought – I thought you had -” When her voice began to strangle itself Ashi pinned her bottom lip between her teeth, trying to focus on the _physical_ pain that caused.

 

She could pinpoint the exact moment understanding rolled across Jack’s features. His eyebrows drew together and he made a small breathless noise. Ashi could taste blood.

 

“Ashi,” he started, placing the now-dead rabbit onto the ground with utmost respect before standing to face her. “That is _not_ for you to worry about. Nothing like that will happen again, I promise, but it is _not_ your responsibility.”

 

Ashi managed to keep her breathing even until Jack drew her into a hug. Then, despite her best efforts, a tiny hiccup broke free and heat prickled against the corners of her eyes. Jack moved to release her but Ashi quickly wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him back in. She buried her face against his shoulder as he reaffirmed his grip across her back. Jack began to run one hand over her hair, each stroke an apology.

 

She wanted to say so many things – _of course I worry, I love you, I hate you for scaring me like that_ – but she was certain that speaking now would break the trancelike embrace they were sharing. There would be time for words later. Right now they both needed a different kind of communication.


	10. Straw Hats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack teaches Ashi how to make a straw hat. Or, these two need distractions to navigate meaningful conversations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So warnings for this one include discussions of child abuse and children being denied food. In the same vein as previous entries, it's not super explicit, I'm not looking to write anything exploitative or voyeuristic. But I know child abuse and disordered eating can both be upsetting subjects and I'd rather be safe than make someone else sorry. 
> 
> This one comes from some prompts left by commenter Aimee. Thanks for all the great and observant feedback! I'm so appreciative of all the feedback and encouragement I've received from readers. 
> 
> This was developed from prompts 5 and 6; "Here's a prompt that's cute without an overload of angst: Jack teaching Ashi how to make the hats" and "Jack and Ashi discussing her traumatic past. I know Jack has a lot of issues... but I just feel so bad that Ashi feels like she shouldn't talk about the things she has been through because it makes Jack upset. ...Ashi's mental health isn't improving by bottling it all up inside." 
> 
> I definitely wanted to revisit that line about Ashi feeling like she can't put emotional weight on Jack, because while I felt it was true to the characters and their situation, it's not something I actually believe.

Jack could feel Ashi lingering behind him, observing him in that curious-but-shy manner she had. They had stopped by a river to have something to eat and refill their water flasks. Now Jack was sitting by the side of the river, his bare feet dangling in the water, weaving long strands of straw together while Ashi hovered impatiently.

 

“Shouldn’t we keep moving?” she asked finally. “We’ve had our rest.”

 

“Rest for the spirit is just as important as rest for the body,” Jack told her. When he looked up from the straw hat that was developing in his hands, Ashi was staring at him sceptically, arms folded and head tilted to the side. Jack countered her pursed lips with a small smile and patted the ground next to him. With a small huff she dropped beside him, her movements almost entirely silent.

 

Ashi dipped the tips of her toes in the river, experimenting briefly with the ripples and wakes she could create in the running water. She rolled the blades of grass around her with her fingers absent-mindedly. She was trying to suppress her boredom, but Jack could tell she felt this was a waste of time. Ashi did not take well to relaxation.

 

She tapped her heels against the side of the riverbank to get Jack’s attention, then pointed to the half-finished hat in his hands.

 

“Teach me?”

 

Jack started another hat from scratch, working slowly so Ashi could copy him with ease. She was a quick student, figuring out how to complete the frame before Jack had finished tying his.

 

“My mother taught me how to make these,” Jack said. Ashi paused in the middle of trying to thread her first piece of straw – the beginning was always the trickiest.

 

“What was she like?” Ashi asked quietly. “Your mother?”

 

Jack’s hands slowed as he considered the question. Thinking of his parents made his heart soar and ache in equal measure. They had loved him, and sheltered him, and placed the last of their hope in him. He had let them down, and was still trying to do right by their expectations. They were exalted in his mind, everything good he had fought to restore. There weren’t words that could do them justice.

 

“She was a very good woman,” he said finally. “Very gentle, and very kind. She had a noble soul, and she loved her family more than anything.”

 

He and Ashi fell into silence. Jack was somewhere very far away; when he glanced over at Ashi to demonstrate how to thread new pieces of straw into the hat, he could see she was somewhere else too.

 

“My mother never loved any of us.” Ashi didn’t look up from her hat, and Jack didn’t dare turn his head to look at her for fear of breaking the moment. It was so rare that Ashi talked about herself, and rarer still that she talked about her mother. He watched her from the corner of his eye, his hands still following the well-practiced pattern around the frame of the hat.

 

“She didn’t love my sisters. I think she actually _hated_ me,” Ashi continued. “I _had_ to be the strongest because _she_ thought I was the weakest. She was always eager to punish me. Distracted. Unfocused. I had to work _twice_ as hard to prove myself. She made sure of _that_.” The grass strands snapped under Ashi’s anger. She let out a slow breath and unravelled the broken threads, then began to weave again.

 

“Sorry,” she muttered, once she had composed herself.

 

Finally Jack felt he could look at her without causing her to withdraw. “For what are you apologising?”

 

“I know you don’t like it when I talk about my sisters and mother,” Ashi stated simply, turning the hat over in her hands to get a better angle on it. Jack’s own hands slowed as he examined what he might have done to give her that impression.

 

“I have never objected to you talking about your past.”

 

Ashi’s lips curled wryly, as if she had caught him in a lie. “You’re too nice to _say_ anything. But you always look so sad when I bring it up. So I try not to. I know you don’t want to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 

Jack considered his response carefully. Clearly there had been some miscommunication between them on this matter, and he had a responsibility to correct it.

 

“It _does_ upset me to learn the ways your mother mistreated you and your sisters,” he started slowly.  “But that is because _nobody_ deserves to be treated in such a way. You are my friend, and I do not like to think of you suffering. Especially at the hands of somebody who was supposed to nurture you.”

 

Ashi nodded slowly, still dutifully weaving. Jack turned his eyes back to his own half-finished hat, but continued talking.

 

“But that does not mean I wish for you to stay silent about such matters. I only wish these things had not happened at all.”

 

“But they did happen,” Ashi said, resignation in her voice.

 

“They did happen,” Jack agreed. “And because you are my friend, Ashi – because I care about you – if you _want_ to talk about these things, then I _want_ to listen.”

 

In the periphery of his vision, Jack could see Ashi was studying his face. He turned and offered her a reassuring smile, which he could see her analysing and turning around in her mind’s eye.

 

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

 

Jack nodded. “I do.”

 

With a satisfied hum Ashi turned back to her hat, almost completed now.

 

“I find it hard to understand expressions sometimes. I grew up surrounded by masks. I only ever saw my sisters’ faces, and we learned to wear masks of our own. If mother though we weren’t focused entirely on our training she would punish us. So I never had much practice with expressions.”

 

Jack nodded, and hoped that why she had interpreted his sympathy as selfish sadness in the first place.

 

“Please, feel free to ask me for clarification if you are ever uncertain.”

 

“Thank you.” Ashi smiled as the straw threads spiralled past the hat’s frame. “Now, show me how to finish this off.”

 

Ashi wasn’t happy with her first attempt. It didn’t curve around her head well enough to stay on.

 

“Make another,” Jack suggested. With a grin that was equal parts guilty and defiant, Ashi began to put together a second frame.

 

“You know, if we didn’t train hard enough, she didn’t let us eat,” Ashi said after several minutes of silence. “Once, one of my sisters got sick – I think it was Aya? She was so dizzy she couldn’t even stand. Mother didn’t let her eat for four days. It was awful. I really thought she was going to die.”

 

“Would your mother truly have let her die like that?” Jack asked before he could stop himself, shock running cold through his chest. During his travels he had witnessed mothers weeping when they couldn’t provide enough food for their children; the thought of Ashi’s mother deliberately starving her own children as punishment made him feel physically ill.

 

“I don’t see why not. She had no problem sending us to our deaths against you. If she’d killed us during training it just would’ve meant we _weren’t worthy of fighting for the glory of Aku._ ” Her voice adopted a sardonic tone as she spun the nearly-completed hat in her hands.

 

“You are worth more than fighting on behalf of a monster,” Jack told Ashi firmly, although whether he was referring to Aku or Ashi’s mother he could’ve have identified. “You always were. Your sisters, too.”

 

Ashi finished tucking the ends of the straw into the hat. “Good,” she declared, turning it around for inspection. Then a keen smile graced her lips and she sprang to her feet. Jack watched her disappear towards a thick patch of weeds and reappeared with a handful of bright yellow wildflowers. Dropping cross-legged next to him, she wove the stems of seven of the flowers in around the brim of her new hat.

 

“Even better,” she announced, dropping the hat on her head with satisfaction. She looked up at him from under the brim, her eyes watery but crinkling with a smile. Even under the shade of the hat, her eyes seemed brighter, Jack thought.

 

“Perfect,” he agreed.

 

Ashi nodded up at the sun, which had circled behind them over the course of their conversation.

 

“Look at that. We spent half the afternoon just sitting here, making hats.” She leaned her shoulder against his, letting him support her weight as their straw hats bumped together. She gave a gleeful giggle. “What a waste of time. My mother would be _furious._ ”

 

Jack matched her smile. “Good.”


End file.
